by Chris Ryan
Alex looked in his mirror and saw a jeep careering across the desert towards them. The Scorpion was driving and his two men were standing up in the back, hanging on to the roll bars. As Alex watched, they lifted their Kalashnikovs and rested them on the top of the bars.
‘They’re going to start firing!’ he yelled.
‘Hang on, everyone,’ shouted Paulo.
As the bullets started to whine around the Unimog, Paulo turned the wheel back and forth, making the big vehicle swerve crazily from side to side. This made them less of an easy target for the men in the back of the jeep, who were themselves struggling to hang on at the same time as firing their weapons. The problem was that the jeep was gaining ground all the time. The jeep was a faster vehicle than the lumbering Unimog and the Scorpion was driving a straight course. With every swerve that Paulo took, the jeep gained a few metres on them.
‘It’s not working!’ yelled Alex. ‘They’re going to catch up with us!’
Paulo nodded grimly. He looked over at the dunes to his left, then suddenly turned the big truck towards them and put his foot down.
Alex ducked as a bullet shattered his window and embedded itself in the dashboard. As he sat up again, shaking his head to get the glass splinters out of his hair, another bullet clipped his wing mirror and ricocheted off into the night. Alex flattened himself against his seat back. His heart was beating so quickly, it felt as though it was about to jump out of his chest. He had never felt so exposed. As the dune loomed closer, filling the windscreen, he tried not to think about what a bullet would do to him.
In the back of the Unimog, they were even more exposed. Everyone was flattened on the floor of the truck, clinging on to the bench supports and each other as the bullets whined overhead, ripping through the canvas cover. Jumoke was clinging to Khalid’s neck and he curled himself around her, trying to shield her from the bullets. Hex was lying across Amber and Li was doing her best to shelter Samir. The truck bed was jarring and shuddering, bouncing them up and down on the wooden slats of the floor until they felt scraped and bruised all over.
When the Unimog hit the dune slope, the truck bed tilted upwards violently and suddenly they were all sliding towards the tailgate, scrabbling for a hand-hold. Li wedged her foot under the bench support and braced herself as Kesia came sliding down on top of her. Kesia began to pull herself off Li, but then she gave a sudden jerk and went limp. Li felt Kesia’s weight slump against her and felt the slick warmth of blood seeping on to the back of her neck.
Kesia’s blood.
Kesia had been hit.
Meanwhile Paulo had changed down and was pointing the nose of the Unimog straight up the steep face of the dune.
‘What are you doing?’ yelled Alex.
‘Ground clearance,’ shouted Paulo, urging the vehicle on towards the top of the slope. ‘It is our only chance!’
The Unimog toiled up towards the crest of the dune in high second and the jeep followed behind, still gaining. Paulo stared at the top of the slope as his windscreen filled with sky, judging his moment. He was waiting for the instant when the front wheels of the big truck crested the dune. His face was set in a grimace as he concentrated on the feel of the pedals under his boots and listened for a change in the sound of the straining engine. They only had one chance and he must not misjudge it. If he eased off the accelerator too soon, they would slide helplessly back down the slope towards the Scorpion. If he overshot, the big vehicle would overbalance and roll over and over down the other side of the dune, crushing everyone in the back of the truck.
‘Now,’ he muttered to himself as the front wheels began to tip over the crest. He eased off the accelerator and the Unimog hung in the balance long enough to make the sweat pop out on his forehead. Then, slowly, the nose tilted to point down the far slope of the dune. Paulo sighed with relief and eased the Unimog forward. The first part of his plan had worked, but that would count for nothing if the second part failed.
‘Watch the jeep!’ he yelled to Alex as he concentrated on getting them down the dune slope in one piece.
Alex stuck his head out through his shattered window. Behind them, the jeep was just coming over the top of the dune. The front wheels rose up above the crest, then tilted downwards – and stopped. The men in the back of the jeep were thrown forward by the sudden stop, then back again as the jeep rocked the other way. One man went head over heels, disappearing down the slope the jeep had just climbed. The other overbalanced, knocking his head on the side of the vehicle and falling in a boneless heap in the sand. The jeep remained balanced on the crest of the dune, resting on its chassis with both its front and back wheels spinning uselessly in mid-air. The engine whined as the Scorpion tried to urge the jeep forward, but there was nothing for the tyres to grip and all that happened was that the chassis sank further into the soft sand.
‘They’ve bellied-out,’ reported Alex.
‘Yes!’ whooped Paulo, slamming his fist on to the steering wheel. The second part of his plan had worked. ‘What did I tell you about this beauty? Ground clearance!’
His teeth shone white below the green lenses of his night-vision goggles as he gave Alex a brief grin and then turned back to the task of getting them safely down the dune. They reached the desert floor again and Paulo sent the Unimog roaring forward across the open ground. Alex looked behind him one more time and saw the Scorpion standing still and silent beside his bellied-out jeep, watching them go. Alex had a feeling they had not seen the last of him.
TWENTY
Li looked deep into Kesia’s eyes and spoke to her gently in French. ‘Kesia. You have to be brave now, all right?’
‘I will be as quick as I can,’ said Paulo. ‘It will not take long.’
Kesia closed her eyes and Sisi squeezed her hand while Li took a grip on her other arm and held it down for Paulo. The bullet had only clipped the arm, carving a channel through Kesia’s bicep without hitting the bone. The entrance wound at the front of the arm was small and relatively neat, but the bullet had made a much bigger mess on the way out. It had blasted a splatter of flesh out ahead of it, tearing a large, ragged hole in the back of Kesia’s arm as it exited.
Paulo had not dared to stop the Unimog until they were well away from the Scorpion. He had crossed the border into Algeria and driven grimly on through the night, with Kesia moaning and crying in the back of the vehicle. Amber and Li had bound her arm with strips of Amber’s headcloth, but the wound would not stop bleeding and soon the makeshift bandage was soaked through.
Finally Paulo looked over to the eastern horizon and spotted the black outline of the sandstone bluff they had passed on the way in. He nodded in satisfaction and brought the Unimog to a halt behind a low rise. Hex, Amber and Khalid climbed the rise to keep watch for vehicles following from the north, while Li and Paulo gently lifted Kesia from the Unimog. Alex had pulled up a few of the wooden slats from the truck bed and made a small fire at the base of the rise. He had boiled up some water and added potassium permanganate from the medical kit in his survival tin. Finally, he had used his knife to cut strips from the remains of Amber’s headcloth and dunked them into the pink, boiling water to sterilize them.
Now Paulo was about to clean the wound and attempt to stem the bleeding. He and Li had left Juma in charge of the fire, where he was now giving out many more orders than were necessary to brew up some tea. They had carried Kesia around to the front of the Unimog, bringing Sisi along to give her friend moral support. Paulo discreetly slipped Alex’s knife blade into the potassium permanganate mixture to sterilize it in case it was needed, then he signalled to Alex up in the cab of the Unimog. Alex turned on the vehicle’s headlights and the little group was suddenly bathed in bright, white light.
Kesia whimpered as Paulo leaned forward to inspect the wound in the glare of the headlights. It was still bleeding freely. Li was going to have to pinch the ragged edges of the wound together while he applied butterfly sutures from Alex’s survival tin. Then he would bind the arm w
ith the sterilized strips of cloth. But first, he had to clean the wound and, as he feared, he was going to need the knife. Fragments of cloth from Kesia’s sleeve had been rammed into her flesh by the bullet and were now embedded in the wound. If he did not get them out, the dust-laden scraps of cloth would cause infection.
Paulo pulled the knife from the water and waited for the blade to cool, then he nodded to Li, who gripped Kesia’s arm more tightly. Paulo dug the point of the knife into the wound and hooked out a fragment of cloth. Kesia stiffened and screamed, then her eyes rolled up in her head and she passed out. Paulo was relieved. Back home on his ranch, he had cleaned up dreadful wounds on cattle that had caught themselves on barbed wire, but he had never had to do this to a young girl before. He set to work, quickly digging out all the embedded cloth while Kesia was still unconscious.
‘There,’ he said after a few minutes. ‘Now we can clean it.’ The potassium permanganate mixture was cool enough now for Paulo to lift out a strip of cloth with his fingers. He cleaned all around the wound, irrigating it well with the sterilized water.
‘Now, Li, I want you to hold the edges together while I apply the sutures,’ he said.
Li screwed up her face at the thought of touching the wound, but she did as she was told and Paulo quickly and expertly applied the sutures that would hold the wound together. Finally he bound up the arm with more strips of sterilized cloth.
‘There. That is the best I can do. Now, we wait for her to wake up again, give her some tea and pain-killers and head on towards Samir’s village.’
Five minutes later Kesia was sitting up by the fire, sipping from a mug of sweet tea that Sisi was holding for her. She looked drawn and she was obviously in some pain but otherwise she was recovering well from her ordeal and the wound was now hardly bleeding at all.
‘Your survival kit saves the day yet again,’ teased Li, grinning at Alex.
‘Will she be well enough to travel?’ asked Alex, handing Kesia two painkilling tablets from his survival kit. ‘She can sit up front in the cab.’
Li translated Alex’s question and Kesia nodded and smiled. She would be well enough.
Juma and his gang of three took over the watch while Amber, Khalid and Hex came down for some tea, then Alex put out the fire and they all clambered wearily back into the Unimog. Amber had retrieved her GPS unit from her quad bike earlier that evening and packed it into a rucksack she had bought in the souk. She went in the front to keep Paulo headed on the right track. Kesia and Sisi sat between them in the high cab.
‘Let us go,’ said Paulo, flourishing the ignition key.
‘Hey!’ said Amber. ‘Where’d you find that?’
‘Behind the sun-visor,’ grinned Paulo.
‘So you didn’t have to hot-wire it after all, back in the town?’
Paulo looked embarrassed. ‘I did not find the key until we stopped here.’
Amber laughed. ‘Don’t you know to look there first? That’s where they always find it in the movies.’
Paulo shrugged and turned the key. The engine coughed, then spluttered to a stop. Paulo frowned and tried again. Again the engine croaked a few times and died.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Amber.
Paulo tried a third time. A harsh grating noise came from the engine and dark smoke began to escape around the edges of the bonnet. ‘I am not sure,’ said Paulo. ‘I think maybe the bullets caused some damage. Hold on, I will check.’
He reached down under the steering wheel and pulled the bonnet release lever. The bonnet sprang open and a sudden explosion of flames shot out from beneath it, rising high into the air and licking against the windscreen.
Amber screamed as a gout of flame roared around the side of the windscreen and flared into the cab through her shattered side window. She flung herself back against the seat and felt the heat of the flame sear past her face, sizzling the hair above her forehead. Amber was terrified of fire. Her parents had both died in a burning plane. She turned to the door and kicked it open with the strength of panic, then she grabbed Sisi’s arm with one hand and her rucksack with the other. Pulling Sisi after her, Amber jumped from the cab. They soared through the flames and landed some distance from the cab, rolling over and over on the stony ground.
Amber sat up and looked down at herself, then over to Sisi. She could not quite believe they had escaped unscathed. She looked back to the Unimog cab. It was full of flames.
‘Paulo!’ she screamed, scrambling to her feet and heading towards the burning cab.
‘Here,’ called Paulo, staggering towards her, carrying Kesia in his arms.
Amber gave a sob of relief, then rushed on past him, heading for the back of the Unimog. The flames were licking at the fuel tank behind the cab and she had to get the others out of the back. Alex was already opening the flaps and peering out, wondering what the problem was.
‘Come on! Out now!’ Amber yelled, grabbing him by the arm. ‘It’s going to explode!’
Alex looked at the jerry cans of fuel wedged under the bench seats. The big truck was a bomb on wheels. If there was anyone anywhere near the Unimog when it went up, there would be no chance of survival. He jumped out, grabbing a water-filled girba from under the nearest bench as he went. Turning back, he yelled to the others, ‘When you get out, run! Follow me and Amber!’
They all scrambled out and began sprinting away from the Unimog, heading for Paulo and the two girls. Amber and Alex were in the lead, Alex carrying the girba slung over his shoulder. Li and Hex took up the rear, with the children in the middle. Li was counting heads as she ran, but she couldn’t get the number right. She tried again. There was one missing.
Li slowed, turning a shocked face to Hex. ‘Samir!’ she gasped.
Hex slowed too, scanning the running children in front of him. Li was right. Samir was not among them. For an instant Hex stood still and a muscle jumped in the angle of his jaw, then he turned round and ran back to the burning Unimog.
‘Hex!’ called Li behind him. ‘Come back! It’s too late!’
Hex ran on. As he ran, he muttered over and over to himself, ‘What the hell am I doing? What the hell am I doing?’ but his legs kept pumping, ignoring whatever his brain thought.
The canvas cover on the back of the truck was alight by the time Hex panted up to the tailgate again. Shielding his face against the heat with his hand, he peered into the smoky interior. At first he thought the back of the Unimog was empty and he had put his life at risk for nothing. Then he saw Samir, still sitting on the bench right at the far end of the truck with his feet not quite reaching the floor and his hair crinkling in the heat. His hands were held neatly together in his lap and his back was straight. He could have been a kid on a school bus, except for the look of frozen terror on his face.
Hex looked up at the blazing canvas roof, then ducked his head and threw himself into the back of the truck. He grabbed Samir by his gandourah and hung on tight as he backed out again on his belly. A piece of blazing canvas fell on to his back and he yelled with pain as the heat began to scorch through to his skin. He fell from the tailgate on to his back with Samir on top of him. He rolled back and forth in the dirt to put out the flames, then he jumped up, hefted Samir under one arm and ran for his life.
Li and the others had stopped a good distance from the Unimog. They watched in horror as Hex disappeared into the smoke surrounding the burning truck. It seemed to take an age before a black silhouette came running out of the smoke again, lit up by the flames behind him.
‘He’s got him!’ yelled Li, spotting Samir wedged under Hex’s arm.
‘Come on, Hex!’ yelled Paulo, urging him on.
Hex was halfway between the Unimog and the waiting group, when the whole thing went up with a massive whump that sent a blast wave of scorching air and flames spreading out from the centre of the explosion. Everyone fell flat and put their hands over their heads as the blast passed over them. Seconds later they were on their feet again, scanning the flame-strewn ground be
tween them and the truck.
‘There he is,’ cried Alex, pointing to Hex’s still form, lying face down on the ground.
They held their breath and watched for one second . . . two; finally Hex raised his head and clambered to his feet. He held out his hand and helped Samir up, then the two of them walked shakily towards the others.
‘Since when did you become a hero?’ demanded Amber tearfully, giving him a hug.
‘Don’t know what came over me,’ said Hex, grinning down at her. ‘It won’t happen again, I promise.’
TWENTY – ONE
‘Well, the good news is we all survived – and we have some water,’ said Alex, patting the girba.
‘And the bad news?’ asked Amber.
Alex nodded at the shattered shell of the Unimog. Flames and smoke were spouting from it and soaring high into the night sky, well above the top of the rise.
‘If the Scorpion is following us, then we’ve just lit a huge “come-and-get-us” beacon.’
‘We should start walking then,’ said Amber.
‘Where to?’ asked Hex, looking around at the dark desert surrounding them.
Amber turned and looked at the sandstone bluff outlined on the horizon. Behind the dark bluff she could see another red glow lighting up the sky. ‘Of course!’ she grinned. ‘Remember that oil installation beyond the bluff? That’s the gas flare we can see in the sky. We can head for that. They’ll have medics there, and satellite communications – even a helicopter pad.’
‘What about the armed guards?’ said Alex uneasily.
‘They’re not going to shoot a bunch of unarmed kids,’ said Amber. ‘Besides, if the Scorpion is coming after us, I’d rather face them than him any day.’
The bedraggled group moved off through the moonlit desert, heading for the northern end of the bluff. It took them hours to reach it, and by then Kesia and the younger ones were staggering with exhaustion.